Best Brewery (2011)

Franconia brewmaster and owner Dennis Wehrmann is a native of the Bavarian region of Germany, home to some of Europe's finest beers and the reinheitsgebot, or German Beer Purity Law. He comes from a family with centuries of brewing experience, and you can taste it in every drop of Franconia's German-style beers. The brewery doesn't go wild with extreme styles, hybrids or knock-you-on-your-ass levels of alcohol, instead sticking with a few traditional styles like the crisp and smooth lager, the rich and malty dunkel and the refreshing wheat. Almost as refreshing is Wehrmann's insistence on environmentally friendly production. The mash spent in the brewing process is recycled into cattle feed, the brewery is housed in an energy-efficient building and Franconia is encouraging the reuse of bottles by working on the implementation of a refund system for the return of 1-liter flip-top vessels in a handful of local stores. We'll prost to that.